The question is no longer which way this Red Sox season will go, but how low it can go.

Any flickering dream of a turnaround was deposited in the baseball wastebasket known as O.co Coliseum, where the sport's worst stadium houses what may be its best team. Three straight one-run losses left the Red Sox heading into Sunday, and the honest among them must realize they don't have what it takes this year.

A club that recoils from bridge years now faces a bridge half-year. The Red Sox hate being sellers, but the alternative is to stand pat and wander to the end of an irretrievable season.

How bad will it get? Can this team make a run at the 93-loss season of 2012 that got Bobby Valentine fired and was the team's worst since 1965?

Probably not, but if Ben Cherington starts selling off talent for a better future, a 90-loss season is possible.

That is the drama of this team now. Are the world champions willing to swallow their pride and play the role of sellers, consigning themselves to a status traditionally reserved for the weak sisters of the game?

The Red Sox have a lot of guys they could trade, but only two that could bring much in return. The guess is that they will peddle neither Jon Lester nor Koji Uehara, but that is only a guess.

Lester wants to stay, and the Red Sox might not want to prematurely close that door with a July trade. Uehara is a different story; he is 39 but still going strong.

In November, the Red Sox could make him a qualifying offer for $15 million or so and hope he takes it. He will want a multi-year deal.

The Red Sox could trade him now and get quite a bit. That would leave them with no proven closer.

Letting Uehara go would send them off to find a new one. That is something they did not do well until they lucked out by having Uehara on the premises after Andrew Bailey and Joel Hanrahan got hurt in 2013.

From Opening Day, the Red Sox kept telling themselves they were a good but underachieving team. The Oakland series was a final exam that showed they are not underachieving.

They're just not very good.

They filched three games from the Twins last week, but the awful offense kills them against legitimately good teams. The vaunted approach to hitting, with its goal of seeing pitches and an acceptance of high strikeout rates, has been exposed by pitchers who throw strikes.

Understandably, the frustration is building. David Ortiz whined so loudly about official scoring decisions that he was reprimanded by Major League Baseball.

Hits have been so scarce that it's no wonder the Sox are begging. But should that be the priority at a time like this?

Teammates are not pointing fingers at each other. John Farrell still commands respect in the clubhouse.

But the team that knew how to win in 2013 has become experts at losing. Their ridiculous number of close games (eight straight one-run affairs, five of them losses, entering Sunday) only adds to the hair-pulling.

They even have less hair. Maybe those beards really did have a mystical power in 2013.

The year has not been a total loss. Who knew Brock Holt would start building a Hall of Fame resume?

Their last breath of hope to rally, though, vanished in Oakland. At the very least, the Red Sox had to split the four-game series to show they could keep up with the good teams.

They didn't. They couldn't. They are one of the worst teams in baseball, one year after being the best.

Do they swallow their pride and dump talent? Do they give up on signing Lester?

Do they bite down hard and bench Stephen Drew, move Xander Bogaerts back to shortstop and play Garin Cecchini at third base? Why not?

Do they assume Uehara will lose his touch just because he's old, and trade away their team MVP?

These are difficult questions, but it's been a difficult season. Any delusion about contending was left behind in Oakland, home to a dump of a ballpark but a very good ballclub.